SeattleSweetie

YES!!! You should be on liquids after surgery (for how long depends on your doctor's orders). You should not be eating ANYTHING that you have to chew right after surgery. The reason is because when they put the band in, they stitch part of your stomach up over it to hold it in place. When they do this, there's nothing but the stitches holding it there. Your stomach has to grow scar tissue around the stitches to hold it there permanently. When your stomach has to digest something, it pulls and contracts, which pulls apart the scar tissue that was just created. It can also pull out the stitches, so that there's nothing left holding your stomach in place. Also, no matter how well you chew your food, your stomach will still have to digest it further. Teeth just aren't able to digest food as well as it has to be digested to go through your system. If this happens, then your chances of having a slip either now or later go up dramatically, which can potentially be a big problem. Depending on the severity, this could result in you have to have your band completely removed later down the road. Just because you don't feel pain, doesn't mean that you're fine. There really aren't nerve endings in the stomach there, so even if you tore all your stitches, you wouldn't feel it until you got sick. Please, please, please go back to your doctor's liquid orders. If s/he didn't clarify them, then call and ask! I don't mean to sound like I'm trying to scare you, I'm really not, but hearing things like this really worries me for your sake. Also, having only been eating like this for a couple days, I'm sure you'd probably be fine if you stopped now and went back to liquids and followed through on the rest of the orders properly - I'm not telling you that because you ate something for a couple days your life is over, nothing like that. I'm just trying to explain the potential consequences if you continue like this is all. I'd hate for you to have problems later down the road because you didn't follow doctor's orders, or because the doctor wasn't clear about them and you didn't know. I really wish you all the best though, keep to your doctors orders and I'm sure you'll be very successful!!

Stuffed chicken Ingredients 1 box Stove-Top brand stuffing – chicken or turkey flavor Milk and butter or margarine as described on box to make stuffing Salt Pepper 1 C dried cranberries ½ C pine nuts (optional) 2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts 4 tsp olive, canola or vegetable oil for cooking Equipment Skillet (either non-stick or stainless steel is fine) Saucepan Toothpicks Baking sheet (preferably a metal one like what you would bake Cookies on, instead of a glass baking dish) Saran or plastic wrap meat thermometer Meat mallet, rolling pin, or can of Beans to pound chicken flat Directions 1. Heat oven to 400°F. 2. Take a small handful of toothpicks and set them aside in a small bowl of Water to soak. This way they don’t burn when placed in the oven. 3. In a saucepan, prepare Stove-Top stuffing according to package directions. Once cooked, mix in cranberries. If using pine nuts, toast them in a dry (no oil!) saucepan over medium heat for a couple minutes until they brown a little bit, then mix them into the stuffing also. 4. Check out the bottom side of each piece of chicken - if you have an extra little flap of meat hanging from any of the breasts, remove and save for another use. 5. Place a piece of Saran or plastic wrap on the counter, place breast on top, and cover with another piece of wrap. Use your mallet, rolling pin, can, etc to pound the whole chicken breast to about ¼-inch thick all the way across. It’s easiest to start pounding near the edges and then work your way toward the center as the edges thin out. Set aside and repeat with additional chicken breasts. 6. Lay a single flattened breast out on your work surface. Using a regular Soup spoon, scoop about 2-3 large spoonfuls of your stuffing onto the center of the breast. Roll the chicken up around the stuffing like a tortilla and use toothpicks to hold the edges together. Close the sides of the chicken as well, so there’s no place for the stuffing to fall out from. Set aside and repeat with the rest of the chicken. 7. If you have extra stuffing left over, place in a small oven-safe bowl. This will be cooked in the oven with the chicken so that if any raw chicken juices were transferred via the spoon, they will cook out. 8. Heat up a few tablespoons of oil in your skillet and, when it’s hot, lay your stuffed chickens in the skillet to cook on the bottom side (toothpick side up). Cook for about 3 minutes on medium heat. This is so that when you cook the chicken the rest of the way in the oven, the top doesn’t dry out before the bottom cooks completely. 9. Remove chicken from the skillet and place on a greased baking sheet. Brush top with a little bit of oil to help browning, and then lightly salt and pepper the top of the chicken to taste. 10. Bake at 400° for about 15-20 minutes. Using a meat thermometer to check temperature, it should register 165-170° in the center of the stuffing. The chicken will be fully cooked without being dry. If you had a bowl of left-over stuffing, cook it at the same time. This should also register 170°. Once cooked through, remove from the oven, let sit for a few minutes to cool slightly, remove toothpicks and serve. Great served with mashed potatoes, gravy, or steamed broccoli on the side. Yummy!

Hi Everyone, I need some Breakfast ideas. I've been looking at the posted recipes and I see a lot of Protein Shakes and things like eggs eggs for breakfast, but eggs are kinda 'iffy' for me and I'm so tired of Protein shakes. Any other ideas for breakfast? Because I'm out of creativity to come up with something on my own... :biggrin:

After I made this thread, I decided to post it as a recipe in the recipes section of the board. Here are step by step instructions, including what a roux is (a mix of flour and fat - like oil or butter), and how to make it come out great: http://www.lapbandtalk.com/f82/solids-stage-recipes-17638/index3.html#post925159 Hope you enjoy!!! :thumbup:

Yummy!!!! I survived my three weeks of liquids! And I didn't kill anyone!!! :biggrin2: My version of a chicken Pot Pie or Chicken and Dumplings... These food are all soft and were preapproved and cleared by my doctor and nutritionist at my three-week appointment today. YAY!!! (Oh and yeah, I know it's a lot of food, but I cook in large batches and freeze individual portions for the days I don't want to cook.)

The only not-so-healthy parts are the butter and biscuits, but there's not much of either per serving... Crust 1 box of refrigerated pie crusts ~OR~ 1 can of refrigerated biscuits (the flaky layers kind are my favorite) Filling 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 quart chicken broth 1/2 an extra cube of chicken boullion (optional) 3 cups cubed cooked chicken or turkey 1 1lb bag of frozen mixed veggies (I like the corn/carrots/green beans/peas combo the best. Birds Eye is the only brand I can find where that mix doesn't come with lima Beans) Directions 1. Heat oven to 425°F. If using pie crust, place one piece of crust in bottom of a glass baking dish and bake for 10 minutes to cook 2. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. When it's completely melted, stir or whisk in flour, salt and pepper. Turn it down to low and just keep stirring frequently until it starts to smell like pie crust. That smell is how you know that the flour has cooked out. 3. Stir in broth a little at a time to start until you have a liquidy, lump-free base (starting with cold chicken broth helps prevent lumps, but it's not required). Add the rest of the broth and cook on med-low heat, stirring frequently until bubbly and thickened. Once it comes to a boil, that's as thick as it's going to get. 3.5 If you woud like to make your sauce extra-flavorful, then this is where you would mix in the extra boullion cube. It will just add a slightly stronger chicken flavor to the whole dish. It's best to microwave a few tablespoons of Water in a little dish and dissolve the boullion in that first, then mix that into the big pot of chicken broth, to make sure you don't end up with a big un-desolved clump in your pot pie somewhere. 4. Stir in chicken and mixed vegetables (adding them while still frozen is fine). Remove from heat. 5. If using pie crust, spoon chicken mixture into crust-lined pan. Top with second crust, seal edge. Cut slits in several places in top crust. If using biscuits, spoon chicken mixture into a greased baking dish. 5.5 If using biscuits, open the can of biscuts, cut each in quarters, and arrange on top of mixture as shown in picture above. 6. Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until crust or biscuits are golden brown. During last 15 to 20 minutes of baking, cover crust edge or top of biscuits with foil to prevent excessive browning. 7. Let it stand for 5 minutes before serving. Now that's just one big giant bowl of YUM. This can be easily frozen in individual portions for future meals. It reheats better in the oven on 400 than in the microwave.

Thank you thank you! (/takes a bow) That's my super-easy cheating chicken pot pie. Start with a roux, add chicken broth (add an extra boullion cube to make it super-flavorful), a bag of frozen veggies, some cooked chicken breasts, and top with cut up chunks of Grands biscuits. Not hard, but definitely tasty. You can also take the same filling idea, but use the pre-rolled pie crust that you find folded in a box in the refrigerated section instead of buscuits. Put a piece of piecrust on the bottom of a baking dish, bake for a 10 minutes in the oven, take out and fill with the chicken filling, add another piece of crust over the top and poke a few holes, back in the oven, and in 35 minutes.... YUMMY!!! Love it!!

Yep, agreed. Congratulations on being banded now though, PB! I'm sorry that your experience wasn't what you thought it would be, but I'm still happy for you that you got a band.

I woke up from surgery to find I didn't have a band at ALL because my liver was too big. My doctor was considering doing an open surgery, but didn't want to go so drastic since I'm still pretty young. He put me on a 6-week low carb diet instead, and when I went back to try surgery again, it went great. He said the diet reduced my liver by more than 50%. He had photos of my liver from both surgeries. The first, it was like a big huge floppy steak. Just laying there. He couldn't hardly move it at all. The second surgery it was way smaller and he took photos of it being lifted up and turned partially over and of all the extra space there was. Anyway, this is probably way more than you wanted to know...

I was never told anything like this either. I'm on Junel FE and nothing was ever mentioned to stop taking it.

I keep hearing about how many people don’t have good restriction until their second, third or fourth fill, and there’s a couple things I don’t understand. Anyone who knows, can you help me out here? 1. Does the method of fill (drinking Water vs fluoroscopy) make a difference in whether a person feels restriction after their fill? 2. From what I understand, is the 'drinking water' method something like having you drink water as they fill you, until the water won’t pass through your band anymore, and then they take a little out? (I’m only 3½ wks out from surgery, I haven’t had a fill yet to know). 3. If that IS correct, then how would you not have restriction after the first fill? 4. If that’s NOT correct, can you please tell me how a fill is preformed with the ‘drinking water’ method? Like I said, I’m only about 3½ wks out from surgery, but I’m just trying to kind of get an idea in my mind about how all this will work. My doctor typically does fills with the ‘drinking’ water method and I’m kindof trying to mentally prepare myself and understand. Thank you so much. :cool2:

Do you have your fills with Flouroscopy or the Water method Nance? (And thank you Dr, that's really what I was wondering.)

Thanks Fluff! I'm feeling really good and motivated. I'm 3 weeks out and I've only lost 17 lbs since surgery (probably because I've eaten a lot more fattening cream soups in the last week or so than I should have, when I started getting really desperate and hungry). The other 29 lbs I lost on my low-carb diet that I had to do for 6 weeks before surgery.

Hi Josh, congratulations!! You're doing so well! I was banded on June 23rd and you're describing my experience exactly. Quick weight loss, feeling starved, and the wierd burpy thing all happened to me. I'm not a Dr, so I can't say the burps are normal, but I can say that you aren't the only one who's had them! It sounds like you're going to do GREAT on this, best wishes!!

Aw, I'm so sorry, I know how frustrating this can be. :party: I've been there myself. When I had my first surgery on May 5th, I was in the hospital, asleep on the table, they had started the operation, and when they got to my liver, the doctor said it was just way too big. There was no way he could get around it and do good work. He said he could have done a kindof half-a$$ job, but he wouldn't have felt comfortable with it and I would have been more likely to have slippage problems in the future. Before that surgery, I was supposed to be on a low-carb diet, bucause carbs are really what help make your liver so big - they break down into glycogen, and glycogen is mainly stored in your liver. So when I was doing my diet, I stayed away from like, bread, Pasta, potatos, etc, but I wasn't really careful with the rest of my food. I wasn't reading labels like I should have, and I came to find out later I had been eating MANY more carbs than I was supposed to because many foods have carbs in them that I wouldn't have expected - fruits, veggies, dairy, etc - and my attitude had just not been in the right place at the time around to learn all this. So after I woke up from that surgery, I was SOOOO dissapointed. I cried quite a bit, it was horrible. But it was bad enough and I was desperate enough that I kicked my butt into gear and did a really strict low-carb diet for the next six weeks (under my doctors instruction) so that it would shrink my liver and my next attempt at the surgery would go well. The thing is, when you're on a low-carb diet, most of the initial weight that you lose is Water weight, however, it can be a LOT if you stick to it - I lost 29 lbs in the six weeks between my surgeries on this diet, a lot of it was dropped really quickly at the beginning of the diet. It's not a lot of fun if you're a carb-fiend, but it's pretty effective for quick, short-term weightloss. Perhaps you might consider talking to your doctor about a low-carb diet, or doing low-carb meals on the plan you're on now? It can be much easier to lose water weight than real fat to start out with (Once you've lost the water weight, you WILL start losing fat after that, the water just goes first), and as a bonus, the first thing to shrink is your liver, which is the main organ that your doctor has to get around in order to do the surgery. If you think that's something that might help you, or that you'd want to consider, then here is a big post that I wrote about low-carb diets - an explanation of what it is and how it works, things to watch out for and how to make it really work for you. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/pre-operation-lap-band-surgery-questions-answers/65020-how-shrink-your-liver-increase-st-weight-loss-low-carb-pre-op-diet.html#post864546 Anyway, I hope maybe this can help you out? I'm sorry you're having such a tough experience, but I really hope you're able to get through this short, tough time and get your band. It will be worth all the hassle in the end. :tt1: ((((((((hugs!!)))))))) Edit: here's another good post of all the good things someone else ate on a low-carb diet and dropped a lot of weight really quickly - http://www.lapbandtalk.com/pre-operation-lap-band-surgery-questions-answers/65020-how-shrink-your-liver-increase-st-weight-loss-low-carb-pre-op-diet.html#post867196

So far as I am aware, most employers have a 3rd party company that handles disability administration (like at my job, we have a company called Prudential that handles ours), and they are the ones you should contact for disability (contact your HR or benefits department for the disability company's phone number if you don't know who to call). This third party company should do all the contact with your doctors, review any medical files they need to and approve or deny your disability claim. They will not pass on any info to your employeer except to tell them whether your claim was approved or denied, so that your employer can pay you appropriately. This is so that you can claim disability without your employer knowing the details of anything going on. I point this out just so people know they don't have to be afraid to apply for disability. Your employer will never know the details of your medical history if you go this route.

I don't have any good books to offer, but I have some webpages that helped me quite a bit: LAP-BAND: Laparoscopic Obesity Surgery | Procedure Lap-Band Surgery - Consumer Guide to Weight Loss Surgery Lapband.com - How It Works Gastric Banding and Lap Band Surgery for Weight Loss They all offer pretty good info on the lap-band. Hope this helps!

I used short-term disability. It paid 70% of my normal pay rate, and there was no waiting period (like having to use 5 days of PTO (same thing aclubb described) time before disability kicked in) if I was hospitalized overnight.

I was about 10 days or so out from surgery when I could finally sleep comfortably on my side.

If for some reason you do have problems with the extra air you get drinking through a straw, but love using them and just don't want to quit, it will help if when you drink, you hold the liquid in your mouth for just a sec and let out the extra air before you swallow, rather than just swallowing it all straight down. I'm a big straw fanatic and that's what I do to save myself the burpy pain.

I have one suggestion, having gone through something a little like what you're doing (my liver was too big once I actually got into surgery and it had to be stopped and postponed) - Reschedule your surgery NOW so that you have a definite date in 4 weeks. Don't wait till the 4th week when the diet is over and then ask about scheduling, it could take a while depending on how busy your doc is. Getting your date ahead of time will also give you something to look forward to so you don't have that feeling that things are never going to get better. Having your date can be a real help to keeping you motivated.

Yay! I'm very happy for you. :biggrin:

Congratulations to you too! :biggrin:

I know it's still horrendous, but for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long, my BMI is finally under 50!!! I started out at 57, back at the beginning of May, and I'm finally at 49.7!! It wasn't even really a goal, but now that I just realized where I am, I'm super-happy and I feel really motivated!! :thumbup: You guys are awesome, I've felt really good having a place like this where i can come and read, even if I don't post that often. I've gotten great food and drink ideas, reinforcement to keep chugging along on my post-op liquid diet, and I'm so truly relieved to know there are others out there with all the same problems, concerns, and hopes as me. I really appreciate all you guys, so thank you.

If you're serious about wanting to do things right, then by all means follow the advice of all the (very well-meaning) long-term bandsters who have posted here. Your first post sounded rather off-putting, that you were going to do it your way no matter what you were told. However, if everyone here just misinterpreted, then please understand their responses are only intended to help, whether it be with soft and cushy replies, or tough-love replies. The people who have been here and been successful for so long do wish to see the same success in everyone else who comes through this site, and anything they can do to help, they will. If they think you need to hear something you may not want to hear, they're going to tell you. That's how it goes, and in the long run, that's much more supportive and helpful than just agreeing with, and validating, someone who wants to do things their way, regardless of the consequences. However, no one here hates you, or anything even close. If you're here looking for real support and real help and you're doing your best to follow the rules given to you by your doctor, then we are ALL here to support you. Every single one of us. We will give you every piece of advice and info we can and we'll pass along every single thing we've learned in any manner that we're able. That's what this place is all about. It's really damn hard sometimes, we know this, we're all living it. But things do get better. Just make sure you do the best job you can of taking care of yourself for your OWN future health and happiness. Good luck and best wishes.